Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sunday, November 27, 2011

I had my darling Jack portrayed. (Those among you who are familiar with this Blog from way back know that he's a Parson Russel Terrier.) I am very pleased with the result and like to share it with you.

The painter is the very talented Sonja Herrmann and it is my pleasure to introduce some more of her work here:

I am a stickler for correct anatomy in animal portrays and Sonja is terrific at that.

Should you be interested in her work, send me an Email and I'll let you know how to contact her. I will put up more of her oeuvre within the next couple of days.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Mad Hattery, a blog I find hugely entertaining, commented on the Sultan of Brunei's birthday banquet:

One of the annual foreign royal guests at the Sultan of Brunei’s big birthday bash is Princess Basma of Jordan, the younger sister of the late King Hussein and the aunt of the current king, Abdullah II. She’s the woman all the way on the left of this photo.

Basma’s tiara is a really interesting diamond piece — from a distance, it almost looks like a floral tiara, but up close, it’s more of an intricate abstract pattern of circles and swirls, with a top element that almost looks like the Prince of Wales feather emblem. It’s stunning! (And Basma has grown her hair out a bit in recent years, which sets of the tiara really well. Love it!)

Maybe I shouldn't have, and I hope the Mad Hattery Blogger won't find it undue criticism of her writings, but here is my comment:

I enjoy your blog very much, so please take this as constructive criticism. I don't know whether you're a monarchist or rather not, but it doesn't really matter. For a monarchist, the monarch derives his authority from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Ten Commandments. That is not the God to which Muslims pray. They say they do (they WOULD say that, wouldn't they?), but they don't. Therefore they all have as much royal authority as "Emperor" Bokassa, even if some of them (as this member of the Hashemite family does) may emulate Western ways. But even if that doesn't mean anything to you and you see all that glitter as part of a huge society bash (which it is becoming more and more anyway), I still object to that kind of commentatorship because you are, I am sure unintentionally, helping to make us in the West comfortable with Islamic sharia law. While I am writing this, in Iran another woman is about to be stoned to death under sharia law. Maybe they don't stone people to death in Brunei, it is even one of the rare Muslim countries that allows other religions to exist as Dhimmies, but that may change at the turn of the Sultan's hand. If we start oh-ing and ah-ing over the deeply misogynist sharia-conform dresses of those women, even though they are bedecked with priceless baubles, and fail to see them as what they are, namely symbols of a cruel death cult out to rule the world, we have made another step in the direction of our self-disposal.

Keep up the good work! Your blog is a real treat in any other respect.

Frankly, I don't enjoy the publicly displayed bare thighs of royal princesses either, but sharia modesty, which is based on fear and hatred of women, is rather not modesty at all, but inverted obscenity.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

What does one call the wedding of a thrice-divorced man in his late fifties to the oldest looking 33years old since mankind left the cages?

For heaven's sake, THAT a "trophy wife"? In his debauched, bloated way Limbaugh has aged well and certainly doesn't look 26 years older than his armpiece.

Of course, the oh-ing and ah-ing over the wedding pictures of that gruesome twosome is disgusting. Of cause that man is a disgrace of grotesque proportions to any "conservative" cause. (Lawrence Auster is, as so often, well worth reading.) So what else is new. But did nobody notice how unlovely and hard-as-nails, albeit handsome, immaculately groomed and made up, that woman looks, with or without fake breasts? Are American men really that emasculated that they think a polished piece of tungsten carbide with some silicone attached to its front is something to boast of or to compliment somebody on? Or are American women really that greedy and attention whorish that they will marry a bloated out, physically repulsive old man with a questionable claim to fame and a execrable personal attitude? Oh well, forget the latter.

Which leads me to another American wedding, Chelsea Clinton's.

And no, I neither like the Clintons, nor is this an endorsement of their politics. I am just observing that Chelsea, who is whopping 3 years younger than the fourth Mrs. Limbaugh, looks as if the age gap between them were somewhere near 25 years. Why that is, I have no idea. Maybe, but that is pure speculation, because Chelsea does not, different from Kathryn Rogers, "like her men well-seasoned". (And no, the latter was NOT a disparaging remark, quite the contrary. How disgusting can American hacks get?) "I grew up so differently, traveling around the world, that I'm sometimes not able to relate to the average person my age," Rogers simpered nausea-inducingly in 2008. And: "Rush has such amazing experience." You bet he has.

And while I'm at it, just a couple of remarks about the fashion aspect of the Clinton wedding:

I take back with the expression of utmost contrition my wish that Hillary Clinton would sometimes wear a skirt. Her MoB outfit by Oscar de la Renta is so incredibly ugly on so incredibly many levels that even I am speechless. Chelsea's miles of ruched lavatory paper by Vera Wang are nothing much to write home about either, but at least it's not butt ugly. Wang is the most singularly uninspired wedding dress designer, at least among the top echelons of that trade. Her dresses are either boring or irritating or, as in Chelsea's case, both. I can only assume that the Clintons are trying to emulate, or to top, the Obamas in their sucking up to third-world-chic. Everything not to appear too European, classy and, dare I say it, "white". But at least de la Renta and Wang do not cater for the drag queen market.

By the way, the dress of grandmother Rodham is, as far as one can tell, very nice, formal, goodlooking and dignified, perfect for a woman of that age. She looks nice, too, and not a day more than 35 years older than the current Mrs. Limbaugh.

What amazed me were the many media reports that spoke of a black tie affair. Dear Americans, yes, the men we saw in the official pictures, the FoB and the groom, wore black ties. But that doesn't make it a black tie wedding. Believe me. I wonder whether so many American hacks simply don't know about what they are writing, or whether the Clintons, only one generation away from redneckia, really announced it as that.

And we even still don't know what one calls the wedding of a thrice-divorced man in his late fifties to the oldest looking 33years old since mankind left the cages.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Believe it or not, it's our new head of state with his current wife. Angela Merkel's candidate Christian Wulff won in the third round of voting the election to become Germany's next president. The high office is largely ceremonial, however, Germans like to be able to identify with the office holder and his wife. Wulff was governor of the state of Lower Saxony since 2003 and will be at 51 the youngest president in Germany's history.

Wulff, who is a lawyer by profession, is one of those typical empty-faced, profile- and characterless career politicians whom we exactly do NOT want in that office. But then, maybe we do.

Yes, it gets worse. In March 2008, after the divorce from his much-respected first wife of almost 20 years, the lawyer Christa, he married wife #2, with whom he had already fathered a child while still married to his first wife. Wife #2, 14 years his junior, has another child, as it is so preciously put, "from a previous relationship".

It gets still worse. This is our brand new "first lady":

Foto: Reuters.

The conservative *giggle*FAZ, who informs us that people with tattoos are keen on making new experiences (which fits the second Mrs. Wulff to a "T") and more ready to go off the beaten track than others, qualities, which ought to be seen as a good omen for German politics, asked:

What is that supposed to be? A keyhole with licking tongues of flame surrounding it ...?

Well, to play Old Dr. Freud: Not really a KEYhole.

However, bad as all this may be, the good thing is that we will be rid of Wulff and the Missus (whoever she may be then) in 5 or 10 years, the latter if the worst-case scenario happens. This comes, mind you, from a supporter of the monarchist thought who was badly burnt by the recent -- sortof -- royal wedding where the future Queen of Sweden married a gigolo form the fish'n chips shop her "fitnesstrainer".

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A month ago, I made some unkind remarks about Michelle Obama's irritating, juvenile, cheap and tasteless exciting, youthful, accessible and irreverent dress style. I apologise. The Obamas are a lower middleclass couple who have been catapulted from nowhere to where they are on the strength of their skin colour and political correctness. Maybe it could have been worse. MUCH worse.

In the course of my research for Whither goest thou, Royalty?, I came across photos of Princess Laurentien of Holland, wife of Queen Beatrix' youngest son Prince Constantijn. Laurentien is the daughter of Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, who was, more or less in consecutive order, a Reader (Lector) at the Europe-institute at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in 1965 Professor of European Law at the University of Groningen, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Cabinet of Den Uyl, Ambassador of the European Community in Japan, amember of the European Parliament from 1995 to 1999, a member of the Provinciale Staten (the provincial parliament) of the province of Groningen for D66, a member of the board of advice of the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, a member of the board of governors of the Nederlands Economisch Instituut, a professor by special appointment of international environmental law at the University of Leiden, a member of the Board of Directors of the Salzburg Seminar, a member of the Board of Directors of the International Institute of Sustainable Development, a temporary professor of international environmental law at the University of Lausanne, minister of agriculture, environmental control and fishery in the cabinet Kok-II, an Adviser of European Affairs at NautaDulith in Brussels and was awarded a professorship in transnational and European Governance at the University of Tilburg, a minister of economic affairs in the second Balkenende cabinet and who is now a Professor at the University of Leiden. He is, too, a member of the Bilderberg Group.

In brief, one would expect his daughter, a typical product of the traditionally educated upper middle-class intelligentsia, to be to a certain extent used to be in the public eye and all that implies. If it only were so. Her style is neither "adventurous" nor "bold", "zany" nor "eccentric" and even beyond bad taste. Words fail me. And for Heaven's sake, can't she get a professional makeup from time to time? Here she is, the pictures are listed in ascending order of the awfulness of the dresses:

This is Princess Laurentien with her husband, who looks drunk. (Or is it her husband's older brother? Those two guys look even more alike than the Dutch do anyway.) That Goth on the right is her sister in law Mabel, a former gangster's moll. They all attended the wedding banquet for Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden on June 19. This is exactly the sort of black and white fabric I want for my bathroom curtains. The skirt doesn't brush the ground, as it ought to, given the extent of formality, and everything else is ugly too.

Peggy Sue Got Married: Queen's Day, April 30, 2008.

Prince Constantijn, Princess Laurentien and their daughter Princess Eloise (cute child!) after the Christening Princess Alexia, second daughter of Prince Willem-Alexander, on November 19, 2005 in Wassenaar. Princess Laurentien seems to be "into" that "vintage" stuff.

At the civil wedding of Prince Pieter-Christiaan and Anita Van Eijk. Did she come from the beach and hadn't time to change? Where are the flipflops?

Crowd-waving following the Parliamentary Budget Presentation at The Hague on September 20, 2005. This outfit is so awful on so many levels that any detailed criticism would be pointless.

This is worse: Prince Constantijn and Princess Laurentien arrive for the church wedding of Prince Pieter Christiaan and Anita van Eijk at the Jeroenskerk in Noordwijk on August 27 2005 . Accept my apologies for what I said about your wide belts, Michelle O!

Prince Constantijn and Princess Laurentien attend a dance performance in honour of the wedding of Princess Mabel and Prince Johan Friso November 24, 2004 in The Hague. Once again, words fail me.

Don't get me wrong. She looks like a thoroughly NICE woman and has a kind and open smile. Obviously, royalty don't have any advisers who tell them when they cross the border from tasteless to farcical. The three royal brothers all married statuesque blondes with bad dress sense. Taken Mom into consideration, that's old Doctor Freud for you.

And to end this, as I like to do, on a positive note, here is the only not just less awful, but genuinely nice picture I could find. Sadly, there is neither a date nor an occasion given.